Educational video site VideoJug presently have 19 great videos teaching useful British Sign Language. How to sign your number from 1-100, The BSL Alphabet, How to talk about food, How to flirt and more. And yes, how to swear is included too.

"Here Comes The Duck" is a simple cause-and-effect activity. You hit a switch and a random animal will appear, such as a Cow, Whale, Lion and some slightly more obscure creatures (to me in the UK) such as the Canada Goose. Most are clearly recognisable via some excellent sound samples. The loose game part comes from spotting the Duck as it zooms past at certain points.

The other games included build on the long-standing eductational strand of accessible software started with the OZNAKI Project in the 1970's. Some clear use of Maths and English with a simple interface. All the games have the facility to adjust the speed, font size and to have text spoken out loud.

I like what 7-128 are aiming at with their software suites. I did find the voice a bit hard to make out at times, especially when clashing with sound samples, or if you rushed it when adjusting game options. My main criticism is that the Baby Bear Edition doesn't have the facility for mouse use within the actual activities. Thus head-tracker, eye-tracker and switch users with an interface limited to the left-click won't be able to play. Hopefully this can be fixed in the future.

This all said, there's really nothing quite like the 7-128 project out there that I'm aware of. I highly recommend people with an interest take a good look.

Due out on February for PC, Mac and Linux Mystic Mine is a must buy for one-switch gamers with good tracking skills. Up to six players can compete in this thinking person's Hungry Hippos crossed with 19th century USA gold rush and an optical illusion.Huge fun with some great accessibility options to slow game play down if needed and even use a complete one-switch accessible menu. Superb! Click the image above to learn more.

Established Accessible Gaming site AbleGamers.com and new-ish kids on the block Alt-Controls.com have teamed up to launch a laudable petition aimed squarely at Sony's PS3 division. They want support built in at a firm-ware level for reconfigurable controls.

The petition reads:

We, PS3 owners and the members of Alt-Controls.com & AbleGamers.com, request that customizable controller settings should be added to the PS3 firmware.

Right now controller layout options are rather limited in most of the games available for PS3. Left-handed players, accustomed using the left analog stick to aim and also disabled gamers with specific needs in the controller setup would benefit from such a feature. Even "regular players" could take advantage by remapping the buttons to their taste. Not to forget about the players who are used to the legacy control layout.

Technically this should be feasible. For example, PSP received this feature in the 3.95 firmware for the PSone games: "While playingPSone games on your PSP, you can now customize how the buttons are assigned by going to [Controller Settings] > [Assign Buttons] and select [Custom]."

Please support the petition - and if you're this way Sony (and Microsoft) isn't it time to start making some positive moves instead of backward steps?

I dreamt of something like this as a kid and now it's real and free. Spotify is a UK only trial of the most amazing (and legal) music player yet. Search on any music by band or artist then click to play immediately with no waiting. Build your own play lists by a drag and drop method. Unbelievably brilliant!

Following the death of Oliver Postgate, another British Children's TV giant has been lost within a couple of months: Tony Hart. I didn't realise that he started in 1964 with a program aimed at deaf and hearing children, "Vision On". What great memories he leaves behind for so many big kids.

Watching an old run of Pimp My Ride reminded me of a chance meeting I had in early 2003 (just pre-OneSwitch) at a small-business start up course. Here I met a homeless freelance artist, Kevin Cox, who showed me photos of the most amazing wheelchair spoke guard protectors he'd painted for his teenage son.I advertised these for a short while but his phone soon went dead and I've never heard from him since. So in lieu of me doing anything useful around that idea - here's some good links:

Some interesting information has turned up in TheGameReviews.com's "Truly Innovative Controllers For Disabled Gamers" article. Does it really cost $500,000 to "just to talk to [Microsoft] about creating a controller for their XBox platforms"? Frightening if so.

There's some historical background within the article including a little interview with Ken Yankelevitz of KY Enterprises who started adapting and creating specialised controllers after a call from Atari in 1981.

For this you'll need a full-stereo 3.5mm 2 into 1 adapter and a 3.5mm patch lead (mono or stereo - both work fine). Maplin Electronics sell this adapter code: FP34M. Using the same 2 into 1 adapter, you can also plug two switches into one device.

NB: If you daisy chain two different types of switch socket together things may not function correctly. Life is never as simple as you might like! Basically try to stick to like for like switch accessible devices and you should be fine.

My partner and I have just finished reading our daughter Mr. Gum and the Dancing Bear by Andy Stanton. We all absolutely loved it. Use something like a FLIP Page Turner to make switch accessible. Here's a little excerpt from a darker section of the book:

"Cautiously Polly [our 9 year old hero] picked her way through the narrow lanes lit dimly by Victorian gas lamps that glowed a dismal orange through the swirling mists. The air was thick with salt and exotic spices, and the night was filled with a hundred terrible sounds - unearthly shrieks, breaking glass, and the cries of the naughty ladies echoing throught the alleyways: 'A penny for a kiss o' me ruby-red lips! An' tuppence for a feel o' me elbows!'

Beggars wailed and wept in the gutters, hair theives stood huddled outside the tattoo parlours and terrifying gangs of gossipers roamed the streets, talking about people behind their backs. 'Outta me way matey', growled a fierce looking sailor, shoving Polly rudely aside as he disappeared in through a crooked doorway. 'I wanna see this bear everyone's goin' on about.'"

The on-line resource of accessible games NanoGames.com is slowly transforming into something very special indeed. Tweaking game settings has become easier, the web-site has been beefed up with helpful information: things are looking impressive.

I was also pleased to see the on-line Dice make a come-back from the old Arcess.com site too. Regarding the main site, Dennis Asher had this to say:

"Still lots more planned (many more games, many more features) but I will get as much feedback as I can about the current version first."

Next on the long agenda for the ATE Arcade is the Atari VCS. I plan to break down use of the Stella emulator to the essential basics for beginners. I also intend to showcase how some well known games can be played as one-switch games and how to play some games using a head-tracker.

Made a small update to the Beginners Guide To Emulation with a great new YouTube clip of Space Invaders being played using MAME Cheats and 4Noah Lite. In effect, this is Space Invaders played with one-switch, with auto-fire and the enemy invaders with their weapons disabled. Many thanks to William Pilgrim for that.

The ATE Arcade (Accessible Through Emulation) is slowly taking some shape. I've uploaded pages dedicated to one of the earliest games consoles, the RCA Studio II. Following the Beginners Guide To Emulation will take you back to the dawn of accessible gaming and to what is likely the first ever one-button game for a home video games console: "Space War" (1977).

Hopefully the ATE Arcade will teach the uninitiated how to make many games more accessible using a range of techniques. The slant will be towards reducing the amount of controls needed or in using alternative controllers to make previously inaccessible games can be made playable. It will also look at bringing as much of an arcade experience within reach of those who have previously been denied it.